It has long been a general practice for a consumer to use a shopping cart or basket provided by a merchant while shopping for goods at the merchant's brick-and-mortar location. More recently, merchants have begun utilizing more advanced technologies to offer additional tools that enhance a consumer's shopping experience and many of which also benefit the merchant in such ways as providing increased security and/or improved inventory management.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,507,279, titled “Complete Integrated Self-checkout System and Method”, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a system in which electronic article surveillance (EAS) and/or radio frequency identification (RFID) are integrated together with a personal digital assistant (PDA) of a consumer/shopper to provide for self-checkout by the shopper, to track the shopper through a store and record parameters such as the shopper's track through the store, the time spent in various location in the store, and items selected by the shopper and items purchased. A database of the shopper's habits, which includes the information recorded while in the store during past trips, is input into a decision program that determines content of advertisements and product pricing that are displayed to the shopper through the PDA or other display devices located within the store. Although U.S. Pat. No. 6,507,279 generally discusses monitoring shelf items selected by the shopper through the use of RFID technology or bar-code scanning with the shopper's PDA, it does not disclose system components that allow the contents of a shopper's shopping cart or basket to automatically be recorded/updated as the shopper places items in the cart or basket. In addition, although the system of U.S. Pat. No. 6,507,279 does allow shoppers the interactive capability to request additional information about items in the store, it does not provide shoppers a fully interactive shopping experience in which the shoppers can compare items available in the store with the shoppers' predetermined shopping needs/desires. Moreover, the system of U.S. Pat. No. 6,507,279 does not provide shoppers the security and/or privacy that many consumers currently desire.